Itunes, Billboard, and the marginalization of black music and black audiences in America

Yeah that's about as perplexing as when I found out that prior to Beyonce, DMX held the record for the most consecutive number one album debuts.

yeah that's 'zero' imperial phases also. producer/performer makes it difficult to define also - dre and puffy had an imperial phase yes, timbaland and pharrell i'd argue no. how do you guys define imperial phase, in terms of numbers? seems like there should be something beyond mere 'very solid hit cycle for an album', some degree of crazy dominance and omniscience is implied as well as a certain degree of prolificacy in a concentrated period of time. maybe also a requirement that yr dominance leak out into records that aren't yr own (albeit maybe you produced them/wrote the song) - 'oh sheila' and a million prince productions and cowrites as evidence of his imperial phase, john cafferty and rick springfield's 'bruce' as evidence of springsteen's (have always enjoyed mouse & the traps 'a public execution' as evidence of what a factor in pop dylan was at the time). if your b-sides are getting heavy airplay...you might be in an imperial phase.

number one album debuts prior to soundscan were virtually unheard of. ppl lost their shit when elton john pulled it off.

Also I'm not sure if Happy will get to number 1. It kind of feels like one of those pleasant throwback hits with a lot of cross genre and cross genrational appeal that fails to break it to number one much like "Get Lucky" or "Fuck You".

― MarkoP, Thursday, February 13, 2014 12:22 PM

o man this is just a trend piece waiting to be written

to be clear i wasn't agreeing w/ the use of 'imperial phase' at all

that luda #s look completely insane ('what's yr fantasy' didn't even go top 20??? also apparently 'welcome to atlanta' not nearly as big a hit outside atlanta) though i do recall being annoyed at the time that 'move bitch' did so much better than his other singles to that point.

Imperial phase denotes a cultural ubiquity, where even castoffs and b-sides become hits too (Elton John 1972-1976, Wings/Macca 1973-1976, Madonna 1985-1991, you know the deal). I don't see Pharrell's as ever having one.

yeah i see 'imperial phase' sometimes used to just mean 'a period where the act managed multiple hits, possibly off multiple albums' and i'm like 'so you're saying chicago had two imperial phases???'

and then you have weird situations like beyonce that past couple of years where it sure as hell feels like an imperial phase but the actual hit singles aren't there

aybe also a requirement that yr dominance leak out into records that aren't yr own (albeit maybe you produced them/wrote the song)

A key tenant. Again: Prince, Madonna, PSB, Babyface, Bowie in England 1972-1976.

You don't think the Neptunes had "some degree of crazy dominance and omniscience" during the early 00s? Maybe "imperial phase" was a bad choice if you're talking producers rather than perfomers but he was knocking out hits on a monthly basis.

Pharrell is only half of The Neptunes, though.

like saying the beatles had one career long imperial phase is true enough but saying the beatles had huge hits their entire career but their imperial phase was 63(64 US)-65 conveys that there was something different about their dominance relative to their peers during this period (and in 64 so complete it's difficult to name a peer), that they were unavoidable in ways they weren't quite in 1969 or even 1967. elvis presley is the second best selling artist of the 60s but maybe doesn't have an imperial phase there.

yeah i think different terminology is probably more useful for producers/songwriters, maybe midas phase.

iirc the classical definition of imperial phase is "the Pet Shop Boys have some hit singles for a few years"

like a midas phase can amplify an imperial phase maybe - dre/puffy again, kanye circa college dropout felt like some kinda hit phase - but you still gotta be able to do it on yr own, the ppl still gotta love you specifically, not just love what you've done w/ someone else they love. ie all those brill building ppl that had megasmashes as performers in the early 70s - neil diamond, carole king - they (maybe) get one imperial phase, not two.

goddamnit crut

have you never played jenga???

michael jackson post-Thriller is the definitive imperial phase, tho, right?: you've got 5th and 6th singles off Thriller, the Jackons' Victory crap, old solo stuff reissued as hit singles ("Farewell My Summer Love"), the songs MJ guest-appears on (Macca and Rockwell) and then all the stuff that's ripping him off, too.

yeah plus that's useful in denoting how mj dominance circa thriller differed from mj dominance circa bad even though in terms of just hit singles they're pretty comparable. mind you bad could be called an imperial phase i guess (or just lumped in w/ thriller's imperial phase though i wouldn't do that, it definitely felt like he went away and then came back at the time), but there wasn't the level of omnipresence that he had w/ thriller.

well i'm gonna step outside and try to do something useful today

I really like Midas phase as an alternative. I'm enthralled by anyone who can set the tempo in pop for a few years, whether that's Burt Bacharach or Dr Luke, but usually once it's gone it's gone. It's virtually impossible to nail it twice, especially once you're in your late 30s. Back when the Neptunes were on the third NERD album and trying to make Kenna happen and dropping the ball on a Madonna record, I would never have predicted that Pharrell would have his fingerprints on two monster hits and one pretty big one in 2013/14.

real cool semantic argument itt

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/chart-alert/5915592/notice-to-black-artists-behind-rbs-struggle-at-radio-the

i am glad that billboard is acknowledging the phenomenon in some way but it would be nice if they also acknowledged their own significant role in it beyond barely mentioning the portable people meter

Pharrell #1 and four of the top five are by black artists!

(speaking of which, my god, that John Legend song is terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrible)

lol yeah it's really bad

but that is good news! and 3 of those 4 are pretty much legit r&b radio hits too

so is this a fluke or possibly a trend or regression to norm? if it's not a fluke what changed in the landscape for this to happen? if it is a fluke what anomalies are present that facilitated it?

I'm glad we slapped that Legend track around.

lol all those 5s. otm.

i think most of the factors that were contributing to black artists missing the top 10 are still in place, and what's going on right now is semi-flukey, as much a perfect storm of the right songs at the right time as it was last year when Macklemore/Thicke blowing up and Justin/Em coming back swung the pendulum hard the other way.

yeah, i mean i like 'happy' probably a great deal more than ilx but i'm not exactly leaning back and thinking 'r&b is gonna be juuust fine' over it. 'drunk in love' is probably a better sign but mainly cuz 4's singles flopping is such a wtf for me still.

also if youtube doesn't help boost 'partition' to number one i am very disappointed in the youth of today

I dunno, I think "Happy" is R&B enough. Or are we measuring whether it counts by how inaccessible we're perceiving it to be to white people?

i'm saying that using a track that owes much of it's success to ad/movie placement as an indicator of a genre's health is probably ill advised. maybe stay on the e! threads in the future.

yeah i mean there are really lots of promotional stars aligning for most of these songs. "all of me" looked like it was going to be a minor hit until the grammys exposure. "drunk in love" seemed like it would remain stuck in the top 15 until the grammys as well, and wasn't really crossing over until then (also it doesn't seem to be crossing over to pop radio to the extent that i thought it would). "talk dirty" was an inevitable hit but as usual r&b radio does not touch derulo.

"drunk in love" is certainly not exactly a slouch in sales or radio play but i am surprised by the extent to which streaming is really carrying it on the charts compared to other measures (especially the week after the grammys when its streams and chart placement skyrocketed). i mean yeah, tons of people bought the album right away and thus won't buy the track again, but that can't be the only explanation can it?

tv in being the best promotional firehose for music shocker

it's kinda funny how the Grammys broadcast ended up being a boon to some singles by black artists after all the complaints of the 'whitewashed' VMAs last year

i feel like "four of the top five are black artists" is an outlier in a similar way to "zero no 1s by black artists in 2013" in that the exact stat is at an extreme, but even if rihanna had released a single in 2013 and it had gone to no 1, it wouldn't have made any difference to the underlying issues/trends

(and the current top five doesn't mean those issues are "solved")

I'm guessing Rev wasn't suggesting that at all.

it's also a little weird that I haven't heard this new #1 a single time on pop radio, though I've heard "Drunk in Love" and the John Legend song a bunch of times. Is "Happy" mostly a streaming thing?

not at all, it's all over the airwaves, #2 on urban radio and #10 on pop radio

maybe Philly radio hates Pharell

I spoke too soon, they're playing it now

I haven't heard it a lot of times on the radio, but I've heard it on a lot of different radio stations -- pop, urban and NPR-affiliated alike.

fwiw i haven't heard it a lot on philly radio either

I heard it on the radio a few days ago & immediately afterwards the DJ came on the air and called his station manager "a gypsy." it kinda deflated the happy moment

and now an "R&B is back!" piece. There's no narrative that can't be overstated.

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/radio/5915823/ross-on-radio-an-rb-comeback-almost?utm_source=twitter